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This study aims to examine the impact of financial inclusion on per capita gross domestic product (GDP) at varying degrees of financial inclusion for a sample of 76 developing countries between 2011 and 2017. To evaluate the heterogeneous impact, this paper constructs the multi-dimension index of financial inclusion to classify sample countries into two sub-samples in terms of the value of FIID, taking account of three dimensions of financial inclusion: access, usage and availability.

This study attempts to identify the presence of reverse causality and long-run relationship between financial inclusion and economic growth by using the Granger causality test (Wald test) and three alternative panel cointegration tests (Kao Test, Pedroni Test, Westerlund Test) respectively. Because of the existence of the bi-directional causality between financial inclusion and per capita GDP, this study uses a fixed effect instrumental variable model with lagged dependent variable to get unbiased estimators from the panel regressions for sample countries.

This paper finds a strong positive impact of financial inclusion on per capita GDP growth in sample developing countries, controlling for labor market structure, financial institutions’ efficacy, infrastructural and governance issues. This study suggests that economic growth will be high in developing economies with a higher level of financial inclusion; however, the positive impact for two sub-samples countries (low and medium level of inclusion and high level of inclusion) are heterogeneous. The estimated result explains that a 1% increase in the financial inclusion index leads to a 0.0153% point increase in the per capita GDP for the countries with a low and medium level of financial inclusion, while this positive impact is significantly higher, 0.0794% point for countries with the high level of financial inclusion. This study also suggests that the higher concentration in the financial market by few agents and the lower level of governance may have an adverse impact on economic growth for the economies with a low and medium level of financial inclusion.

This study is an original study that contributes to the research gap by explaining the heterogeneous impact of financial inclusion on economic growth at varying degrees of inclusion in the two sub-sample countries. Moreover, this study posits greater appeal as it explores the issue using the sample of only developing economies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of direct-to-physician promotion on physicians’ prescription behaviour. There were very few studies which have investigated to what extent the pharmaceutical promotion directed towards physicians influences physicians’ prescription behaviour in the Malaysian context.

A research framework has been developed based on the buyer behaviour stimulus-response model. A survey method has been used to collect data from 154 medical practitioners from private health-care facilities located at Klang valley in Malaysia. IBM SPSS and SmartPLS statistical programs have been used to analyse the data and validate the model.

This study found that personal selling is the most significant promotional tool for physicians’ prescription behaviour, whereas advertising is the least significant one. Sales promotion and public relations are the second and third most significant promotional tools. Direct marketing is found to be not significant.

This paper will help the pharmaceutical companies develop more effective plans to gain a competitive advantage for their business by having a guideline for pharmaceutical marketers as an input to the more efficient allocation of their promotional budgets.

This study has introduced a comprehensive understanding of all the factors in the pharmaceutical promotion that influence physicians’ prescription behaviour in Malaysia and how these factors are interrelated, influencing physicians’ prescribing medicines for patients.

The purpose of the paper is to back-test value-at-risk (VaR) models for conditional distributions belonging to a Generalized Hyperbolic (GH) family of Lévy processes – Variance Gamma, Normal Inverse Gaussian, Hyperbolic distribution and GH – and compare their risk-management features with a traditional unconditional extreme value (EV) approach using data from future contracts return data of S&P500, FTSE100, DAX, HangSeng and Nikkei 225 indices.

The authors apply tail-based and Lévy-based calibration to estimate the parameters of the models as part of the initial data analysis. While the authors utilize the peaks-over-threshold approach for generalized Pareto distribution, the conditional maximum likelihood method is followed in case of Lévy models. As the Lévy models do not have closed form expressions for VaR, the authors follow a bootstrap method to determine the VaR and the confidence intervals. Finally, for back-testing, they use both static calibration (on the entire data) and dynamic calibration (on a four-year rolling window) to test the unconditional, independence and conditional coverage hypotheses implemented with 95 and 99 per cent VaRs.

Both EV and Lévy models provide the authors with a conservative proportion of violation for VaR forecasts. A model targeting tail or fitting the entire distribution has little effect on either VaR calculation or a VaR model’s back-testing performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the back-testing performance of Lévy-based VaR models. The authors conduct various calibration and bootstrap techniques to test the unconditional, independence and conditional coverage hypotheses for the VaRs.

Concerns relating to the representational faithfulness and, consequently, the relevance of fair value (FV) estimates are likely to be heightened in the wake of market uncertainty caused by the COVID pandemic. Therefore, this paper aims to study the relevance of supplementary disclosures intended to improve the representational faithfulness of FV estimates by examining their impacts on audit fees and investors’ valuation of FV adjustments in the uncertain market condition of 2020.

The sample is comprising Australian real estate firms. The authors develop both weighted and unweighted disclosure indices based on supplementary disclosures related to Level 3 FVs under IFRS 13 Fair Value Measurement. The authors measure the levels of disclosure by the sample firms based on these indices from 2018 to 2020 and ascertain their effects on audit fees and the market value of FV adjustments on investment properties.

The authors find that real estate firms increased supplementary FV disclosures during 2020. The authors document a negative association between supplementary disclosures and audit fees, although the authors find no incremental impact of disclosures on audit fees during the pandemic. Additionally, the authors find that investors’ pricing of FV adjustments increased with the increase in disclosures during the market uncertainty of 2020, while in the pre-uncertainty period, their pricing influence was not significant.

The findings extend the understanding of the role of supplementary disclosures on Level 3 investment properties in mitigating the perceived audit risk for auditors and the faithful representation concerns for investors in a distressed market environment.

COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the lives of people and businesses around the world in different ways. France, Spain, Italy and the UK are among the worst affected countries by this pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to identify and compare different corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities taken by the clubs and player of the major football leagues of these four countries to develop a more comprehensive model of intervention.

This paper has analyzed the initiatives taken by these football clubs and players to address financial vulnerabilities, mental health problems and domestic violence among the stakeholders and compared them with the existing CSR and humanitarian models. A case study approach has been used to collect and analyze data related to the CSR activities taken by the players and club management. Official websites of the clubs, newspaper and journal articles were among the major sources used to collect data for the paper.

Football clubs and players of the four major leagues have raised funds through different campaigns and delivered foods and essential medical supplies to the communities and hospitals to address financial vulnerabilities, mental health issues and domestic violence within their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have provided guidance to their followers using social and television media to improve their physical and mental health during the pandemic. Online competitions, quizzes or virtual hangouts have also been used by the players to engage the stakeholders on a frequent basis. Football clubs have also initiated campaigns to raise awareness within the community on available medical services for the victims of domestic violence and also provided them with shelter, food, medical, legal and online counseling services.

Football clubs and players of the major leagues were always at the forefront to help the communities and hospitals to address issues related to mental health problems, financial vulnerabilities and domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of this paper could help and guide other entities in designing a more comprehensive model of CSR interventions during pandemics or crisis situations to address financial vulnerabilities, mental health problems and domestic violence within their communities.

The paper deals with the challenges and opportunities of enabling resilience of the built environment through building regulations and codes in a developing country context. The purpose of this paper is to explore how voluntary compliance can be achieved, drawing from the views of key stakeholders in this field.

Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, is a central hub of more than 20 million people. The city is growing rapidly in an unplanned manner to host the increasing population, creating vulnerability to different hazards including earthquakes, fires and building collapses. The Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) and the building and planning regulations of the Capital Development Authority are the key instruments for ensuring safety, but lack of compliance is widespread. The views of relevant stakeholders on issues relating to compliance of safe building codes for ensuring disaster resilience were documented and analysed.

It was found that those involved in construction activities are in most cases not aware of the BNBC; landowners were reluctant to follow regulations and codes to avoid extra cost; and construction workers were not interested in compliance as there were no incentives. While enforced deterrence is required, it has its limitations in a context such as Dhaka. Raising awareness and building capacity at all levels can offer a way forward for voluntary compliance. Incorporation of knowledge on regulations and codes for disaster resilience into university and technical education curricula are likely to allow developing the capacity of built environment professionals and widespread awareness can be raised through training, media and public events.

There are many publications on building regulations and codes, but few specifically focussing on disaster resilience. Also, much of the discussion on regulations and codes deals with compliance through enforcement, but hardly any deal with the idea of voluntary compliance. There are also a lot of publications on disasters in the case study city, Dhaka, but comparatively few on building codes and regulations specifically for disaster resilience.

The setting of private finance companies that failed in New Zealand during 2006-2012 was characterized by weaker corporate governance and enforcement of securities law. This paper aims to explore audit failure in this setting and examine whether auditors erred in their audits of the failed finance companies and whether the audit failure rate of Big N auditors was different from that of non-Big N auditors.

This paper adopts the archival research method and uses three sets of evidence to assess audit failure – the frequency of going concern opinion (GCO) prior to failure, misstatements in the last audited financial statements, and the violation of the Code of Ethics.

The study finds that only 41 per cent of the sample companies received the GCO in their last audit prior to failure and provides evidence of material misstatements in the financial statements of a number of failed finance companies that received clean audit opinions prior to failure and breaches of the Code of Ethics by a number of auditors. These results strongly indicate audit failure for a number of failed finance companies. The audit failure rate, however, appears less for Big N auditors than for non-Big N auditors.

The study draws attention of the stock market regulator and the accounting profession to an area, the audit of private finance companies, that needs better quality audits.

This paper provides systematic evidence of audit failure in failed finance companies in New Zealand. It also furnishes preliminary evidence of Big N auditors compensating for weaker corporate governance.

This paper aims to investigate a fundamental research question of whether the Islamic banking business model makes corporate earnings more uncertain. This question arises because prior research shows that Islamic banks do well in loan performance but incur more operational costs than conventional banks, indicating the systemic limitation of Islamic banks in business risk management.

The study used a sample of banks to conduct the panel regression analysis with 15 years of data for 532 banks (129 Islamic and 403 conventional) from 23 Muslim countries across the world. The authors estimate earnings uncertainty in two ways: the spread and standard deviation of the country-adjusted return over the sample period and applied the difference-in-difference approach interacting cost to income ratio with the Islamic bank dummy, checking if Islamic bank’s high operational costs contribute to more earning uncertainty.

Islamic banks’ returns on assets are significantly more uncertain than conventional banks due to higher operational costs. Consistent with earlier evidence, the study also finds that Islamic banks generally have fewer nonperforming loans than conventional banks. The authors conclude that Islamic banks trade-off between reducing credit risk and escalating business risk.

This study documents that the Islamic banking model helps build a safer asset portfolio but gives rise to the uncertainty of corporate earnings. Therefore, the choice between Islamic and conventional banking models involves a trade-off between credit and business risks. It is a new finding that we add to the literature body on Islamic finance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the properties of net income (NI) and total comprehensive income (TCI) of listed companies in New Zealand (NZ). Four properties of TCI and NI are examined: persistence, variability, predictive ability, and value relevance. Whether the value relevance of TCI depends on its reporting location is also investigated.

A cross‐sectional research design is used with data on TCI reported by NZ listed companies in 2010 under the new disclosure requirement in IAS 1. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are used with a sample of 86 firms to test for persistence, variability, and predictive ability, and 81 firms to test for value relevance of NI and TCI.

The study finds: NI is potentially more persistent than TCI and potentially explains contemporaneous stock returns better than TCI; no significant difference in the variability and predictive ability of NI and TCI; little evidence that the value relevance of TCI depends on its reporting location; other comprehensive income (OCI) has incremental ability to predict one‐year‐ahead CFO, although the incremental ability of OCI to predict one‐year‐ahead NI is not statistically significant; and OCI is not incrementally value relevant.

The findings would be of interest to securities analysts and other users in valuing firms and when earnings are used in contractual settings (e.g. management compensation). Further, the results would also be of potential interest to standard‐setters.

The literature on comprehensive income is growing. However, the authors are not aware of any study that investigates the properties of NI and TCI in accordance with the new requirement to report comprehensive income in the amended IAS 1 which came into effect in NZ on January 1, 2009. The paper adds current evidence on the properties of NI and TCI under IFRS to the international literature.

The aim of this paper is to determine corporate social reporting practices and to examine the type and extent of such reporting in the corporate reports of manufacturing companies in Swaziland over a period of two years from 2007 to 2008. This paper also aims to examine the various areas of social practices in which companies are involved.

The study uses questionnaires and corporate reports to gather information from 30 selected manufacturing companies. This research uses content analysis of corporate reports as a method to measure the extent and nature of corporate social reporting according to the number of words disclosed over the two‐year period.

Findings show that the concept of corporate social responsibility is fairly new in Swaziland and very few companies disclose corporate social responsibility information in corporate reports. However, the study finds that there is a trend of increasing corporate social responsibility information disclosures among the companies from 2007 to 2008.

The increasing trend of corporate social responsibility information disclosures indicates a positive step towards the further development of corporate social responsibility information reporting practice in Swaziland as well as other developing African countries.

The study makes an important contribution to the knowledge of corporate social responsibility in Swaziland. In addition, it also elaborates the perspective for a greater understanding of the social obligations that corporate entities owe to their stakeholders and society in general.